Hossein Jorjani
First publication: 2026 – 06 – 30
Bacon’s warning against the “supposition of impossibility” speaks directly to a recurring problem in scientific inquiry: the tendency to dismiss certain questions or lines of investigation as inherently unanswerable before they have been adequately explored. His remedy was not unqualified optimism but what he called “true and sound hope,” grounded in “a deep and faithful contemplation of the nature of things.” Hope, in this sense, was methodological rather than psychological. It rested on the conviction that careful observation, disciplined experiment, and perseverance could often overcome obstacles that initially appeared insurmountable. Historical examples such as Columbus’s voyage—which Bacon himself invoked—illustrate how well-founded confidence in inquiry has sometimes enabled discoveries that prevailing opinion regarded as improbable or impossible. At the same time, Bacon’s position cautions against confusing hope with wishful thinking: ambition must remain disciplined by evidence and by the actual possibilities afforded by nature.
This methodological principle continues to resonate in contemporary philosophy of science. Debates over the prospects of ambitious research programs—whether in fundamental physics, artificial intelligence, medicine, or space exploration—often turn on the question of whether apparent limits reflect genuine constraints of nature or merely the limitations of present knowledge and technique. Bacon’s warning therefore remains pertinent: declarations of impossibility should themselves be treated as hypotheses requiring empirical justification rather than as conclusions reached in advance of inquiry.
Bacon’s concern also bears comparison with Thomas Kuhn’s analysis of scientific revolutions. Kuhn argued that periods of “normal science” are characterized by problem-solving within an accepted paradigm, while persistent anomalies may eventually provoke a crisis and the emergence of a new conceptual framework. In this context, Bacon’s “supposition of impossibility” resembles the conservative tendency of an established scientific community to regard unfamiliar approaches as implausible or unproductive simply because they fall outside the prevailing conceptual framework. Although Bacon and Kuhn differed profoundly in their philosophies of science, both recognized that intellectual progress depends, in part, upon resisting premature judgments that existing theories or methods have exhausted the possibilities of nature.
Hossein Jorjani 